A good way to find scientific papers is by
using either Google Scholar or the
ISI web of science to search by
key words for refereed
publications pertinent to your topic. If you are on campus or are using
UCSD proxy servers, you should be able to click through to the full publications
that come up in your search.
Scientific journals that come to mind:
Water Resources
Research
Journal of
Hydrology
Journal of Ground
Water
Journal of Water
Resources Planning and Management
Journal of
Environmental Economics and Management
American Journal
of Agricultural Economics
Water Resources
Bulletin
News articles and the Aquafornia water blog (from your readings) are useful for overviews , analysis, and recent information. These sources may be credible (or not) depending on how they are written, but regardless they are likely to lead you to credible sources, as well as providing perspective. Here's one good starting point:
Los Angeles Time
opinion debate
Project H2O (April 7-11, 2008)
2. How
do we use turnitin.com?
See the detailed instructions.
3.
How do I create footnotes? Are endnotes acceptable?
Footnotes and endnotes are both fine. Any consistent format is OK. The
Chicago Manual of Style is one
standard format, and you can find a detailed discussion of its usage
for
term papers at
this University of Wisconsin writing center site.
You may also use citation methods
commonly used for scientific papers, such as in line references to
author
and year, with a full reference list at the end. A sample reference
might
be "[Smith and Jones, 2006]". In this case, you should
be sure to identify specific page numbers where relevant ("[Smith and
Jones, 2006, p. 291]").
4.
How should web pages be cited? What types of web pages are acceptable
as sources?
If you use a web page as a source, then you should cite it, providing
as much standard reference information as possible: author, title,
date,
location, etc. Keep in mind that web pages vary considerably in
credibility. In general, the most credible information comes from
peer-reviewed scholarly publications (which could include electronic
journals and electronic reprints posted to web pages---if you use a
journal article or other publication that happens to be posted to the
web, then please cite it the same way you would cite it if you had
found it in the library, with standard information such as author, title,
publication year, journal name or publisher, volume number, page numbers, etc.)
Researched
reports (with citations) from environmental organizations are also
often fairly reliable, although they
may not have gone through a peer review process. Some web pages are
essentially advertising brochures for a particular product, and you
should
probably assume that the authors are presenting a biased view of their
product's features. (Much material also appears in blogs, which can
be interesting and provocative, but may not have much real research or
information
behind them. We don't recommend blogs as primary research sources.)
5.
If I choose to support the plans for a desalination plant at San Onofre,
do I need to address the second part of this topic (propose how San Diego
should diversify its water resources)?
If you can argue that a desalination plant at San Onofre can meet all of San Diego water needs, then you don't need to consider other options for water resources. However, you might want to think about what would happen in the event of a desalination plant maintenance shutdown.
6.
How do I request an extension?
Please contact the TA (Robb Kulin for the 1 pm section; Ben Maurer for the
2 pm section). Note that if we grant an extension for one of the paper
deadlines, that will not extend to the other deadlines.
7.
For personal reasons, I expect to miss class on April 21st, when hard copy
drafts are going to be redistributed for peer evaluation. What can I do?
Please coordinate with the TA for your section. The best plan is to
submit the electronic version and hard copy early, and arrange to pick up the
hard copy for peer evaluation at your earliest convenience from the TA (or
let us know that you'll pick it up in class on Wednesday). Alternatively,
you could have a friend bring in your hard copy and collect your copy for
peer evaluation.
8.
Does the outline (due on April 15th) need to include references?
Our instructions do not specify that you must include references, so we will not
impose strict requirements on references. However, since this is a research paper,
you cannot reasonably expect to articulate a position statement without having
some facts to justify it. A good outline should include
some preliminary reference information. For example, the sample outline that we
discussed last
week pointed out the necessity of identifying sources for all of your information.
9.
How should I format my paper?
Please use the following guidelines.
- Upload Word or pdf documents only to turnitin.com. (RTF may be OK as well;
plain text can be a little tricky for formatting.)
- Include your name (First, then Last), PID, Date in upper right hand corner, single spaced.
- Use 1 inch margins, with 12 point font for the whole document. Use 1.5
or double spacing for the main text.
- Center your title at the top, but do not include a separate title page.
- Clearly label sections (intro, background, etc.)
- Include page numbers, centered at the bottom of the pages.
10.
Now that I've turned in my outline, how soon will I get feedback to let know
if I'm on the right track?
We're planning to get your outlines marked and returned by Friday, April 18
(in class), and we'll give you feedback, particularly if we think you've
drifted off track.
11.
I'm planning to consider the thesis "The benefits of utilizing nuclear energy in desalinization for freshwater outweigh the costs that it provides to the city of San Diego." Would focusing on nuclear energy and its benefits/costs be appropriate?
Your approach sounds fine. You may want to extend your consideration of costs and benefits beyond simple economic costs so that you consider other types of societal costs. And you'll want to make sure that your analysis is specific to San Diego water issues. How much water can be produced with what costs/risks?
12.
Is it desalinization or desalination, or are both acceptable?
Both are acceptable. See for example http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Da-En/Desalinization.html.
13.
My position statement is at the end of an opening
paragraph that is more than half a page single-spaced, which means it will
be on the second page, double-spaced. I know that some professors prefer
smaller, and in turn, more paragraphs for papers, and would actually
subtract points if paragraphs were more than a page double-spaced.
There is no formal requirement for the length of paragraphs, but it is probably a good idea to make sure that people reading your paper can find your position statement fairly quickly, before they get to the end of the first page, for example.
In addition, you also will want to avoid confusing your reader(s) by having
paragraphs that are extremely long.
14.
Should the background section use subtitles to identify separate subsections
for economic and environmental pros and cons, as the outline did, or should
the text flow continuously?
Make your paper easy to read. That means that you probably want to
put headings on major sections, but not on every paragraph. So if you
develop an extensive multi-paragraph discussion on economic issues, then
you might want to add a section heading. But otherwise you probably
won't need a heading for every issue.
15.
The paper instructions say to write a 2000-3000 word paper of 4-6 pages,
but 6 double-spaced pages is not anywhere near 2000 words. What do you
really want?
We inadvertently used the wrong conversion factor for words to pages when
we wrote up the instructions for this paper. We had actually intended to
ask for a 4-6 page paper (which should have been 1000-1500 words). At this
point (now that first drafts have been submitted) we know that some students
took the 4-6 page statement seriously and have turned in shorter drafts, while
others really labored to churn out 2000 words. We want this to be fair
for students, and we still plan to have Paper 2 be 8-10 double-spaced pages as
originally specified in the syllabus. Therefore we have adopted the following
policy.
For students who write a short final draft of the first paper, there will be
no penalty for
having a paper that is in the 1000-2000 word
range. If you do this, we'll weight the paper as specified in the
syllabus: 20% for Paper 1; 30% for Paper 2.
For students who write a longer final version of the first paper
(anywhere between 2000-3000
words) we will compute your final course grade two ways:
(a) with the original 20%/30% weighting for the papers
and (b) with a rebalanced 25%/25% weighting.
For each student, the final course grade will use whichever weighting
gives the highest course grade.